


Try Our Very Best to Fake It

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Kaiju, Daddy issues all around, Kid Fic, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Rock Stars, Smoking, UST, Which eventually leads to boning calm down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-04-25 07:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14374209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: After Vanessa gets a job in Paris she can't say no to, Hermann finds himself in charge of his sperm donation daughter - who he's never spent more than a weekend with - for the entire summer. Terrified he's going to scar her for life with his ineptitude, and recovering from a humiliating scandal at work, he moves them both to Berlin to hide at his brother's flat.The last thing he needs is a very loud aspiring rock star named Newt living directly above him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly have no explanation for this. I've never written an AU this far off the central curve before. Let's get weird folks!

Vanessa had invited Hermann over for breakfast, and that meant she wanted something.

Not only was his flat in Oxford a good forty minute drive away from her cottage, Vanessa didn’t even eat breakfast. All their years at university, even when she had three tests and a modeling shoot on the docket, Hermann only ever saw her drink coffee, maybe grab a granola bar for the road. “I’m not hungry in the morning,” she’d shrug.

So the fact that he could smell bacon cooking when he rolled to a stop in her gravel driveway was suspect. The front door opened, but Hermann didn’t see Vanessa step out. He let his vision drop two and a half feet. A small child stood there, with her mother's dark curls and a thin, angular face with a noise that narrowed down to a point.

“Look! It’s Hermann!” Vanessa was squatting on her haunches on her front step, gripping Sally’s shoulder with one hand and pointing with the other, as if the child didn’t understand the name applied to the only other person in sight, a person she'd known all her life. “Go say hi!”

Sally tilted her head and blinked, observing Hermann has he heaved himself out of the car and began up the walkway, his cane sinking into the soft country ground with each step. “Why?” she asked.

Vanessa rolled her eyes and stood up, holding the door open for Hermann. “Yeah. Definitely your kid.”

* * *

She’d been offered a job in Paris, a three month shoot for Ralph Lauren’s entire fall line; she’d be the face of it in every magazine, on every billboard and bus shelter. There would also be long, long hours at work, and receptions to go to, magazine editors to charm until it was three in the morning.

“I sense a request for a favor approaching,” Hermann said, pouring cream into his tea and watching it swirl and settle. Something told him he didn’t want to be drinking hot liquids.

Vanessa closed her eyes briefly, exhaled through her nose, and blurted it out. “I need you to take Sally for the summer.”

Hermann felt vindicated in his choice not to have anything in his mouth he might have spit in shock. “Take her where?”

Vanessa opened her eyes and sighed. “I need you to watch her. She won’t be in school and my mum is still recovering from her surgery, she can barely get around on her own, let alone with a four-year-old.”

Hermann looked from the kitchen table into the living room, where Sally was spinning in a circle, waving her ragdoll through the air as she did, it’s red yarn hair flying behind it. “Vanessa-”

“Hermann, you’re her father.” She said, and her voice cut across the room. Sally stopped spinning and started staring at them again. Hermann hunched closer to the breakfast tabled, leaning over his tea, which was getting cold.

“I’m a _sperm donor_.” He whispered. That had been their arrangement when they sat down and nailed out the details almost five years before. Hermann got Christmas cards, visited Sally on her birthday and Hanukkah. A handful of times he'd watched her for an afternoon or a weekend.

On a certain level he found her fascinating. A somewhat quiet, very messy child, too young to have a real personality, but with a handful of features that were undeniably Gottlieb. In return, he hypothesized, she saw him as a sort of uncle. Pleasant enough in short doses, but not someone who would take her away from her house for an entire summer, and certainly not her  _dad._

She called him _Hermann_ , for God's sake.

“Yeah, okay, fine. Then think of it as helping me, the person you love most in the world, achieve a professional dream she’s had since she was sixteen.” Vanessa reached across the table and gripped both of  Hermann’s hands in hers. Her wrist caught on a bowl of strawberry jam, leaving red streaks, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Please, love.”

He clicked his tongue, looked back over at Sally, who was absorbed once again in making her doll fly. “I don’t have any of the things she needs-”

“I’m going to pack her clothes and toys, it's not like you have to buy a crib-”

“And my apartment in Oxford is so small-”

Vanessa’s eyes hardened. She tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “Okay, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to pull this card, but here it goes: Sally’s been asking about you, lately. She wants to know who her dad is, and what the other side of her family looks like. This could be a great opportunity to take her back to Germany, show her her heritage. _And_ you’d have your family there to help you.”

Hermann took a long sip of his tea, which had gone lukewarm, if only to stall for time, assess the pang that felt suspiciously like guilt in his stomach. When nothing came to him, he just said the truth. “I’ve never spent more than a weekend with her. What if I-I scar her emotionally?”

Vanessa raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Are you going to lecture her about Alan Turing until she begs for death?” Hermann scowled and she softened. “Hermann, you’re sweet and you’re very resourceful. She’s going to love hanging out with you.”

“You’re going to keep at this until I agree, aren’t you?”

“Honestly? I think it’d be good for both of you. I know things haven’t been the smoothest at work, since-”

Hermann coughed and withdrew the hand Vanessa was still holding. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Okay, of course." Vanessa nodded, too solemn and agreeable. "So...? Get away for the summer? Hang out with our really cool kid? Have me owe you for eternity? How ‘bout it?”


	2. Chapter 2

For some reason, when Dietrich said his new apartment was in Berlin, Hermann hadn’t thought he actually meant _in Berlin._

When his brother offered to let Hermann and his daughter crash with him for a few days while Hermann secured them a rental for the summer, he was picturing somewhere out in Oranienburg. A place with front yards and driveways, like the suburb in Bavaria where they grew up. But his siblings had always preferred the chaos of cities in the way he didn’t, the crush of people and noise and sound. So when the taxi dropped him and Sally off at a paint splattered two-story building, just a few blocks from the Spree River, he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Dietrich was waiting for them on the front steps, drinking a steaming cup of coffee despite the sweltering June air. “ _Kleiner bruder!”_  he yelled, bouncing off the steps to meet Hermann on the sidewalk, kissing him on both cheeks and hugging him so hair he nearly cracked a rib. Hermann barely had time to react before Dietrich released him, crouching down to grin at Sally, giving her a peck on the forehead. “And _meine_   _kleine Nichte!”_

Sally scrunched up her nose and stepped back, half behind Hermann’s legs. Vanessa kept her up late the night before so she would sleep on the plane, but she was becoming increasingly agitated the more awake and aware she became of her surroundings. “Who is he?” she asked Hermann.

“That’s…your Uncle Dietrich.” Hermann turned to his brother. “She doesn’t speak German.” Dietrich looked up at him and frowned.

“What? A Gottlieb doesn’t speak German? Don’t let Karla hear that.” He gently poked Sally in the chest. “You will learn,” he said in his heavily accented English.

“She’s four. And British.” _And not a Gottlieb._

Dietrich leaned backwards, stroking his beard. “God, she looks so much like you. And Vanessa.”

“Yes, well, that is how genetics work.” Hermann rolled his neck and looked up at the building. “So are you on the first floor or second?”

“First, no worries,” Dietrich said, glancing at his cane. “There’s some cool people living upstairs, I think they’re in a band.”

“Please tell me you’re joking,” Hermann said, holding Sally in place as she tugged at his hand, trying to run down the street and straight into a construction site.

“...Sure.”

* * *

Dietrich was not joking.

“Hermann?” Sally sat up on the other side of the bed. “It’s loud up there.”

In a fit of valor, Dietrich announced he would crash on his couch "and let the child and the disabled little brother take the bed”. 

A bed neither of them were currently sleeping in, due to the deafening screech of guitar and the clash of drums coming from the apartment above.

Hermann yawned and pushed himself up onto his elbows. “I know. I’m going to go tell them to stop, try to close your eyes.” The last thing he needed tomorrow was a sleep deprived child to contend with. He already had to hunt for apartments and find the address of the black hairdresser Vanessa had researched because, quote, “I don’t trust you with her braids, white man.”

Grabbing his cane from where it leaned against the night table, he pulled himself out of bed with a groan and padded into the living room, where Dietrich snored softly on the couch. Unsurprising, he was heaviest sleeper in existence. “I grew up with a new baby in the house every three years,” he used to joke. “You learn to sleep through that, you can sleep through the end of the world.”

The music made the stairs vibrate as Hermann pulled himself up them, hanging onto the railing for extra balance. When his nerves were as frayed as they were now, he needed all the support he could get to keep steady.

He had to knock on the door of Apartment B for almost a full minute before someone heard him. The guitar faltered, followed by a drumbeat slowing to a stop. Hermann straightened up, prepared to put on his professor voice and shame these unruly teenagers into-

The man who opened the door was not a teenager. He was around the same age as Hermann, flirting with thirty despite his best effort to dress in the contrary. He was freckly and compact, wearing a threadbare tee-shirt and a half dozen stringy leather bracelets. A blue guitar was slung around his back.

“Yo,” he said, fishing in the pocket of his ripped up jeans and pulling out a few loose dollar bills. His eyes – green, ringed with eyeliner – flicked up and he froze. “You are not the Chinese delivery guy. Unless they let people deliver in their pajamas now, which seems like a very chill business decision, to be honest.”

He spoke German with a strange accent, some mix of Berliner and New England. Probably the child of immigrants. No matter, Hermann wasn’t here on a mission of linguistic curiosity. “Are you aware of what time it is?” he asked, resting both hands on the crook of his cane.

The man frowned. Behind him, Hermann saw two other people, a young man and woman, peering out at him with mild curiosity. The man sat behind a drum set and reached out to steady both cymbals. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”

“I am trying to sleep in the apartment below yours. _Trying_ being the operative word.”

The man’s frown deepened. “Since when do you live down there? What happened to Dietrich? He’s literally never complained before.”

“Well, I am. Kindly keep this noise down.”

“Newt? What’s wrong?” The girl asked in English. She had blue streaks in her hair.

Without breaking eye contact, the man – Newt – replied, also in English, “this tight-ass grandpa looking motherfucker is complaining about us practicing in our own apartment."

Hermann smirked and shook his head, relishing it for a moment. “I speak English, _Newt._ ”

“Oh shit,” the other guy said, a chuckle in his voice. The girl covered her mouth with her hand, fighting the urge to do the same.

“Shut up, Raleigh.” Newt hissed, the bridge of his nose and his cheeks turning pink. He turned around and shrugged at Hermann. “Sorry man, but we have a really important gig tomorrow night, and we need to practice.”

Hermann flexed his fingers. He felt very young, all of the sudden, the only one on campus who wasn’t going out on a Saturday night, yelling at the people drinking outside his door that he was trying to study. Everyone laughing at his requests. All he managed was, “this is a residential area and the incoherent noise you call music is interfering with people’s sleep.”

“Then put in some earplugs,” Newt said, his voice getting hard. “Bye, weird guy sleeping in Dietrich’s apartment.”

He slammed the door in Hermann’s face, but the apartment stayed quiet. Only when Hermann was all the way back down the stairs did the music start up again, even louder than before.

That _asshole._ Newt saw the cane, and knew Hermann wasn’t going to climb all the way back up to yell at him again. That utter _cock._

“They’re still being loud,” Sally said the moment Hermann walked back into the bedroom. She was sitting up in bed now, one of the picture books Vanessa packed open on the mattress in front of her. God, could she already read? Why didn’t he know that?

“I forgot how insufferably rude everyone in this country is,” he grumbled, lying back down.

“Hermann?”

“Yes?”

“Mummy said I was made in a doctor’s office,” Sally said. “And that you helped. Are you a doctor?”

Hermann almost smiled. “Yes, but not an medical doctor. I have a doctorate in applied mathematics.” Sally stared at him blankly. “Never mind. What are you reading?”

“It’s _Paddington._ Mummy reads it to me every night.”

Hermann picked it up, glared at the ceiling, and sidled closer to the center of the bed. “Alright, then we’ll read it now.”

Sally couldn’t read yet, he discovered, but she had heard the story so many times she yelled at Hermann whenever he tried to skip over a page. When he was done she asked him to read it again. By the third time through, she fell mercifully asleep against his arm.

He closed the book and stared at it’s glossy cartoon cover for what felt like hours. Above him, Newt and his friends were starting a ear-shattering rendition of “Somebody Told Me.”

Sally was going to spend her first week in Germany falling asleep to Killers covers. Vanessa was going to kill him. He was going to kill Newt.


	3. Chapter 3

Newt and his band finally stopped playing around three in the morning, but by then Hermann had given up on sleep, sneaking out of the apartment to watch the city wake up around him. The early morning was his favorite time in the summer anyway, when the air was the coolest and the ground felt pleasantly warm from the day before.

And then Dietrich ran out the of the building in a mild frenzy, and almost tripped over Hermann sitting on the front steps, drinking tea.

“Ow! Are you trying to render another one of my limbs useless?” He snapped. Dietrich sidestepped him, adjusting his leather satchel on his shoulder.

“Sorry, I overslept. I have an Intro to German Poets class to teach in like–” he glanced at his watch. “–thirteen minutes, _scheiße._ ” He reached down and pulled Hermann’s cup out of his hands, took a swig, and handed it back to his scandalized brother. “You are _so_ smart to take the summer off from teaching.”

“...Yes.” Hermann didn’t choose not to teach summer courses at Oxford that year. It was a gentle but firm suggestion from the head of the Mathematics department, right after the whole nasty business between he and Professor Choi came out.

“Perhaps it would be best for everyone to take a step away, catch our breath before the fall term,” she said as they sat in her office and Hermann burned in his chair. “The students… it will just be easier for everyone to focus.” _If they don’t have you to look at and whisper about every day._

“I’ll probably be home around six, you have my number if you and Sal need anything. Oh, by the way, I woke her up, she’s in the kitchen.”

Hermann’s back straightened in his indignation. “You woke her up? _Gott en himmel_ , why?”

“You can’t let her sleep all day, she’ll stay up all night again and she’ll never get on a normal cycle.”

“How on Earth do you know that?” _Why don’t I know that?_ “You kill plants!”

Dietrich walked backwards down the pathway to the street and shrugged. “Oldest child, baby. Shit, I really have to run.” And he did, jogging down the street with his bag dragging in the air slightly behind him.

Hermann called Sally out onto the front steps, mostly he didn’t feel like getting up. His leg was still stiff from the plane, and he didn’t sleep well enough to fully relax since then. She toddled outside, still in her Elsa pajamas, a hand gripped around a chocolate bar half pulled out of it’s silver wrapping. Goddamn Dietrich, leaving a house full of single guy junk food.

“That’s not breakfast,” he said, trying to pull it out of her hand. Sally whined in protest. “Sally, let go.”

“No!” She yanked it back harder, and stumbled, knocking her kneecap against the jagged corner of the stone steps. She froze, and after a second Hermann saw red soaking through the blue leg of her pants. _Fuck._

Sally mouth froze in an O, her lips turning purple as she inhaled, inhaled, inhaled for a wail, the way only small children can do.

“No, no, calm down, stop crying,” Hermann said. He awkwardly set down the candy on the ground and wrapped an arm around Sally. This wasn’t his fault, that he wasn’t hugging her right. It’s not like Lars Gottlieb was a particularly affectionate man. _Prior performance affects future results._ Sally sobbed.

“Whoa, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

Newt was standing at the top of the stairs, in the same shredded jeans as the night before and a red tee-shirt that, bizarrely, read Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had intricate tattoos running up each arm from his wrists, disappearing under the cuffs of his shirt. Hermann hadn’t noticed them the night before, in his sleepy haze.

He deliberately ignored how the sight of them made his mouth feel dry, and focused on how the rest of him felt irritated.

“Why are you wearing an MIT shirt?” He rolled up the leg of Sally's pajamas and examined the damage. Only a skinned knee, but that was a gunshot wound to a toddler.

Newt raised his eyebrows, slight surprise making Hermann feel victorious. Sally clutched his upper arm, and while her lips faded back to their normal color, her face was growing redder, and slick with tears.

“Because I went there?” Hermann scoffed and Newt crossed his arms. “I’m sorry, why is that funny?”

“My daughter is clearly hurt, could you just piss off?” His slang always got more British when he was stressed out, a fact he attributed to spending all his time around Oxford undergrads.

Newt glanced down at Sally. His eyes didn’t do the slight twitch of confusion many people’s did, the few times they’d seen Sally and Hermann without Vanessa, like they couldn’t understand how someone nearly albino could have a kid so dark. To his credit, at the very least, Newt seemed to grasp basic genetics.

And then he did something even more surprising. He dug into the back pocket of his jeans and held out a small white rectangle.

“Do you need a band-aid?”

Hermann eased Sally down, sitting her on the step above him and holding out her leg. “Why on Earth do you have that on your person?”

Newt crouched down on Sally’s other side, and Hermann resisted the urge to pull her farther away from him. “Hello, musician? My fingers get cut, I drop amps on my feet, it’s a bloodbath.” He smiled and Hermann returned it hesitantly. It was like meeting Dr. Jekyll after a fight with Mr. Hyde the night before.

“Hey rock star,” Newt said to Sally, peeling the band-aid open. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“No!” Sally said, still sniffling. “Hermann, do it.”

Newt rolled his eyes and handed the band-aid to Hermann, who carefully lay it smooth on Sally’s knee.

“There you are, good as new,” he said, feebly. He stood, wrapped his arm around her waist, and hoisted her onto his hip. He nearly toppled over; Sally was almost too heavy for him to hold with one arm anymore, without his bad leg buckling and both of them falling on their asses. A sudden jolt of shame hit him in the chest.

“Whoa–” Newt reached out to steady him, but this time Hermann did swivel away. Newt dropped his hand and sighed. “Look, dude, I’m sorry about–” He waved vaguely at the air next to his head, as if that signalled their interaction the night before. “I didn’t know you had a kid.”

Hermann rolled his eyes. “So you’re fine with keeping adults up all night, but you draw the line at preschoolers?”

“Yeah, actually. I thought you were just being a dick. Kids need sleep, otherwise their growth gets stunted.”

“I imagine you’re speaking from personal experience,” Hermann said before he could stop himself, and then tensed for the shove he knew was coming. Newt only whacked his shoulder, lightly.

“Oh, very original, asshole. You wanna go for the glasses next? You’re really breaking fresh ground here.”

They fell silent for a moment. Sally’s whimpers had scaled down to only sniffles. Hermann absently reached up to comb her hair out of her face with his fingers.

“Thank you for the first-aid,” he said awkwardly and oh fuck, he definitely wasn’t strong enough to hold Sally anymore, he had to put her down. He gritted his teeth and Newt nodded.

“Yeah, sure thing. Catch you both later.”

As soon as he disappeared out of sight, Hermann nearly collapsed, setting Sally on the step and dropping hard next to her, rubbing his hip and wincing.

Hermann let Sally finish the candy bar - “don’t tell you mother” - and gave her another one to keep her quiet while he got them both dressed and into the city. He looked at a few apartments in the neighborhood, but found everything was too expensive or in an even louder section of town than Dietrich’s was. The crowds of tourists swarmed around the preserved sections of the Berlin Wall, taking photos and reaching out to touch the decades old graffiti through the protective fences. At a few moments, Hermann nearly lost Sally in the chaos, and wished he and Vanessa had thought to pack a stroller. Was she too old for a stroller? He wasn’t sure when children stopped needing them. Hermann had never been a child who took off running.

Vanessa called after lunch and told them stories about her new job, the apartment Ralph Lauren set her up in and the photoshoot she had to wake up at four AM to get ready for. She made faces and sang silly songs with Sally, who brightened and giggled in a way she hadn’t since Hermann took over her care.

He had trouble swallowing the longer he watched them talk, mother and daughter, so clearly a _family._

Sally held up his cell phone to him in one chubby arm. “Mummy wants to talk to you,” she said. Hermann tightened his grip on her hand – they were crossing the street – and tucked the phone in the crook of his shoulder.

“Hey Daddy, how you holding up?” Vanessa asked, cheerfully. “How’s Deet?”

_I can’t do this. I’m going to hurt her or lose her. Dietrich’s weird, aggressive neighbor who has the gall to be confusingly attractive knew more about first-aid than I did._

“Everything’s fine.”

There was no music that night, as Hermann tucked Sally in and set _Paddington_ on the dresser. Newt had said they had a gig. They must be tormenting some other unfortunate part of Berlin. Dietrich had texted to say he was going out to a drink with his TA, so Hermann stretched out on the couch and listlessly thumbed through some of his brother’s books until he passed out.

He was awoken many hours later by drunk yelps in the front lawn, followed by harsh whispering and a long _shhhhhhh._ The apartment was dark, and Dietrich was sleeping on the floor next to the couch, hugging a peeling paperback to his chest.

“God, I’m still buzzing,” said a male voice. Raleigh, the drummer in Newt’s band. Hermann pushed himself up on the couch, looking out the window in spite of himself. Raleigh had his arm slung around the girl with blue streaked hair, tonight accompanied by a short black dress and glittery eyeshadow.

“It was a good crowd,” she agreed, and pushed herself up on her toes to kiss Raleigh’s neck. Hermann looked away, suddenly feeling like a dirty voyeur, until he heard her say, “Newt, where’s Newt?”

“Shit, is he still on the train?” Raleigh dissolved into fresh giggles. “Mako, did we leave him on the train?”

Almost on cue, harried footsteps on the sidewalk echoed off the the walls of the brick buildings on either side of the road. “I was writing–something down–in my notebook,” came Newt’s voice, stopping every few words to gasp for air. “I had an idea–for a song.”

“Come on man, again with the lyrics?” Raleigh asked. “The audio guy at the club tonight fucked with the amps so bad no one could hear you sing anyway.”

“Everybody at The Griffin just likes the background music anyway,” Mako added. Newt rocked from one foot to the other.

“Yeah, well, The Griffin was a stupid dinner club and the booker was full of shit when he was selling it to me.”

“Okay, Newt.” Mako said, with the air of someone patiently placating a child. “I am tired, are you coming up?”

“You guys go ahead,” he said, and when Mako and Raleigh stumbled inside and up the stairs to the second floor, he muttered, “I don’t need to listen to you bone.”

He plopped down on the front steps, just as Hermann did that morning, and took back out his notebook.

“I think he’s going to lose it again,” Raleigh’s voice came from a few feet above Hermann’s head, through the floor, and he was again stunned by the thinness of the walls. “He does remember this is supposed to be fun, right?”

“For you and me it’s fun,” Mako’s voice floated down too. “For him, it’s everything he has.”

Hermann closed his eyes and lay back down, pretending he had never woken up, pretending he couldn’t hear Newt’s pencil scratching on paper outside, punctuated by the odd car horn or rumble of the trains.


	4. Chapter 4

“Why do you talk two ways?” Sally asked as they waited on the Hallesches Tor train platform. Another sweltering morning of comparing apartments, and now Hermann was taking her back to Dietrich’s for lunch.

“What do you mean?” He replied absently. He was toying with the idea of bringing Sally to the Holocaust memorial by Brandenburg Gate, although she might be too young and too exhausted for a place that literally translated into _Memorial for the Murdered Jews._

“You see Uncle Dietrich and go-” here Sally made gibberish noises in a German accent, and Hermann snorted before he could stop himself. The train screeched to a halt and he walked her on. Usually people stood up and offered their seats to the child and the man with a cane, but today everyone was too focused on getting somewhere for their lunch break, or too lethargic in the heat to bother.

“I’m speaking _German_ ,” he told her. “It’s a different language from English.” He reached up with his free arm to grab a hanging bar.

“Why do you speak German?”

 _Because that’s the language I think in. The one that my dreams happen in. The first set of sounds that I used to navigate the world. Because it reminds me of my mother and my sister and all the times I felt safe._ “Because that’s the language people speak here, and this is where I grew up.”

The train lurched and Sally clung to his leg, before she could fall over.

“I’m four.”

“I’m aware." A warm, pleasant feeling rose in his chest as his daughter hugged his good leg. He wished he had a hand to reach down and squeeze her shoulder.

“I want to speak German.”

Hermann smiled again, the sweat down his back suddenly not so unbearable. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

He taught her _Good morning, my name is, goodbye_ and Sally repeated the phrases over and over, gleeful. As they sped towards their temporary home, Hermann let his eyes flick down the car, at the inspector milling through the crowd to check people’s tickets, at the girl with blue streaked hair reading by the window, at–

Wait.

Newt was hanging onto the pole right in front of Mako, the dark lines of his tattoos thrown into sharp relief in the sunlight as the train sound over the streets. They were entires pages of music, Hermann realized. Clefs and accidentals and notes all dancing over the thin black lines of the staves. He was talking to Mako, more subdued than usual, and Mako nodded absently, tucking her left leg underneath her as she turned the page.

The train jolted to a stop and Hermann stumbled in his haste to get ahold of Sally and walk them off the train before two-thirds of their very loud neighbors saw them.

“That’s the band-aid guy!” Sally pointed, and great, now she decided to be less bashful. Newt glanced over and grinned, whacking Mako on the knee.

“Ow! Newton!”

“Hermannnnn!” Newt said, pushing his way through the crowd, Mako standing up behind him to watch. “And Sally! You know, I had to ask your brother what you two were named, as you never introduced yourselves. Pretty rude.”

“Hello,” Hermann tried, still doing his best to hustle Sally away. They’d made tentative peace yesterday after Sally’s fall, but who knows if they would start right back up again with their ear-splitting nonsense tonight, if they didn’t have a performance?

“Newton speaks German too,” Sally said, still pointing at him like a spectacle at the fair. Hermann supposed he couldn’t blame her on that front. “ _Guten morgen._ ”

“How’s your leg feeling, rockstar?” Newt asked Sally, but the direct contact with someone who wasn’t her father made her clam up again. They walked out onto the platform of Dietrich’s home station, and Newt and Mako fell in step next to them.

“She’s doing well, thank you.” Sally wriggled free of his grip then, and bolted five feet ahead. “Stay on the sidewalk!”

“Yeah,” Newt laughed. “She’s fine.”

“There’s a playground nearby,” Mako said. “Over in Görlitzer Park.”

“Ooh, shit, right,” Newt’s eyes lit up. “I think I got high and swung on the swings there for like an hour in March.”

“It is also for children,” Mako said, and Hermann smiled.

“ _Danke._ Sally, stop, crosswalk!”

“I can walk you there,” Newt said.

“Oh, that’s really not necessary–”

“It's no trouble, I want to get some fresh air anyway. Mako, you good?”

“I have to finish this book for my class tomorrow,” Mako said, before nodding at them both. “I will see you back at the flat.”

Hermann watched her go, helplessly, as he and Newt caught up with Sally, who bounced on the toes of her feet, waiting for the white glowing icon to appear on the display across the street. Newt smelled like coffee, really _really_ strongly of it. He glanced over and caught Hermann making a face.

“I’m a barista,” he explained. “Rock and roll doesn’t always pay the bills. I ran into Mako on my ride home from work and I wanted an excuse to give her some quiet while she studies.”

“She is a student?”

“Yup,” Newt’s voice took on a strange lightness then, and he stared straight ahead as the three of them shuffled towards the park, the green edge barely visible a block away. “She and Raleigh are both exchange students at TU for the year.”

“That’s where Dietrich teaches,” Hermann said.

Newt rolled his eyes. “I know, that’s how I found out about the apartment. He posted a notice for a subletter of the second floor.”

“You’re a student as well?” Maybe he wasn’t as old as Hermann first pegged him for. This sort of scattered collection of life choices looked much better on someone in their early twenties than on the other end of the decade.

“Almost there, Sal!” Newt said, instead of answering. Something in his throat hitched. Hermann looked away.

For the rest of the short walk, Newt made a continuous stream of small talk, bitching about his manager Lucien, explaining his tattoos in enthusiastic detail (“this one is the bridge of ‘Space Oddity’ and this one is the chorus of the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’”), and glancing up at Sally every few seconds, making sure she wasn’t too far away.

The jungle gym, swings, and seesaw were swarming with children, even in the heat, so Hermann regulated Sally to climbing a purple rubber cage next to a bench, where he could both watch her and not have to stand up for another second. The sheer amount of walking in cities made him want to collapse.

To his surprise, Newt didn’t leave. He plopped down right next to him.

“You know, many people would call the police on a man with no children loitering around a playground,” Hermann said, lightly.

“You should examine why your world outlook is so dark,” Newt said, and didn’t move.

They fell silent for a moment, watching Sally climb up the plastic purple jungle gym. “So what’s the deal with you two? Divorced, widowed? Single dad by choice? That’s very modern.”

Hermann made a noncommittal hum in the back of his throat. "Sally's mother and I are not...it's nothing of that nature."

“Mummy says he likes to kiss men,” Sally called, still focused on making her way to the top of the structure. Hermann could physically feel all the blood in his body rushing to his face. Newt laughed.

“I’m a sperm–Vanessa, Sally’s mother, is my best friend, we never–” Hermann sputtered.

“You’re a sperm?” Newt clapped his hands, still cackling. Hermann blushed more deeply. “Dude, calm down, that was priceless. Kids say the darndest things, right?”

He was giving Hermann an out. A way to brush off Sally’s comments and walk safety back into the closet he occupied in most public life, if only because people never thought to assume otherwise.

But Hermann was tired of surprising people with his personal life after the last few months, and he’d learned that lying was only going to lead to more trouble down the road.

“My friend Vanessa wanted children, and she was tired of waiting around for a husband to get them,” he told Newt quietly.

“Wait, how old is she?”

“Thirty. Twenty-five at the time.”

“Jesus, the straights stick to a schedule,” Newt said. Hermann turned, surprised, and Newt smirked and gave him two thumbs up. “Yeah, I’m into dick too, it’s one of my many charming qualities. Continue.”

“She-she asked me to donate the… male component of the equation,” Hermann said, slightly thrown off by Newt’s casual admission. “I’ve watched Sally occasionally ever since, but she’s solely my charge for the next few months. This is our longest outing… ever.”

“Huh, well that explains yesterday.”

“Excuse me?”

Newt shrugged. “No offense, but you don’t really seem… like you know what you’re doing.” Newt’s words slowed, but he seemed unable to stop them from dripping out. Hermann stiffened.

“If I were you, I would not be making judgements about other people’s lives.”

Newt recoiled, actually turned and learned back, away from him. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Hermann folded his hands in his lap. “Thank Mako for telling me about this park.”

“Oh my God, Mr. ‘I don’t even think to get a band-aid when my kid bashes her leg in’ is making judgement calls about other people’s lives?”

“You are the one who made a judgement,” Herman snapped. “I merely pointed out that thirty-year-olds in glass houses with dead end jobs should not throw stones.”

Newt squinted at him for a moment, and then stomped on Hermann’s good foot.

“Are you _five?_ ” Hermann asked, cupping his foot in pain.

“I’m four,” Sally said.

“No, I'm twenty-nine, so I have one more year before _my life is a mess,_ right?" Newt stood up and stormed off. Hermann watched him go, and he didn't look back once.

“Mummy says we shouldn’t hurt each other,” Sally called. She had made it to the top of the cage and now sat, cross-legged, at the apex. “She says we should use our words when we’re mad.”

“Well, Newt’s mummy clearly never taught him that.” Hermann forced a smile, though his toes throbbed in pain. “Would you like to go on the swings?” _Oh God, she still hasn't had lunch. He's right. Damn him for being right._

* * *

They returned to the apartment only when Hermann’s skin had turned a deep pink in the sunlight, and Sally had worn herself out playing to the point that Hermann would have to carry her home if she got any more exhausted, something he didn’t have confidence he could do.

Dietrich was sitting on the couch with a red-haired young woman he introduced as Mila, one of his TAs. They were both in shorts and eating grape popsicles while Dietrich read sections of his latest manuscript out loud, pausing occasionally for Mila to make edits in red pen. Hermann got another popsicle out of the freezer and unwrapped it for Sally - “just one before dinner!” - and sat down in the armchair opposite his brother, waiting for his body and his temper to cool down.

“Let’s do some German numbers, Sally.”

There was a gentle knock on Apartment A’s front door just a few minutes later.

“Are you going to get that?” Hermann asked Dietrich.

Dietrich whined. “I’m so comfortable.” Hermann lifted his cane off the ground and waved it in the air. “Oh, good idea.” Leaning across the coffee table, Dietrich snatched the cane out of his brother’s hands, turned it around, and used the crook to pull open the door. He tossed it back, grinning. “And you’re the engineering one.”

Mako was standing at the door, her short hair clipped back from her face.

“Oh hey Mako,” Dietrich said, turning back around.

She nodded, her eyes scanning the room and landing on Hermann. “I would like to invite you to our show tonight,” she said.

Hermann frowned. “Your show?”

“Our band is playing at The Drake tonight. The slot is very good.”

Hermann actually laughed. “I must decline.”

“What?” Dietrich sat up on the couch. “Dude, you have to go, they’re awesome, The–” he turned back to look at Mako. “What is your name now? It keeps changing.”

“It was Gipsy Danger at our show last night,” she smiled. “But Raleigh and Newt got into an argument about that over breakfast.”

“Well, whatever they’re called, they rock. I’d love to go but I’m already up to my ass in lesson planning.” Dietrich snapped his fingers. “Oh, and that means I can watch Sally!”

Hermann shook his head. “Thank you for the invitation, but I doubt Newt would want me there.”

“Newt stepped on his foot at the park,” Sally said. Dietrich and Mila looked to Hermann for confirmation, slightly horrified, but Mako seemed unperturbed.

“Consider this an olive branch,” she said. “You must understand, Newton is not–he never thinks before he speaks.”

“Huh, sounds like someone else I know,” Dietrich muttered, and Hermann jabbed him in the leg with his cane.  “Ow! Come on Herms, live a little. This is your summer too.”

“But–Sally–”

“I said I’d watch her! My God, do you think I’m going to let her smoke cigarettes?” Dietrich exclaimed, and Mila laughed. Hermann had the distinct sensation of being backed against a wall.

“Please? It would mean a great deal to me,” Mako said. "I do not wish for Newt to make another enemy, especially someone so close by."

It had been awhile since he'd been invited anywhere. His colleagues at Oxford, never the most social bunch, had become virtual ghosts when it came to the dinners and salons he used to frequent. Hermann felt his resolve – which was getting weaker and weaker these days – soften even further.

“It’s not after ten, is it? Anything that starts after ten PM is not worth going to."

“Oh Sal,” Dietrich sighed. “Your daddy is so lame.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Berlin, you don't swipe your ticket to get onto the train. You just have to hold it and sometimes it's checked at random mid-trip. If you can't produce it fast enough you get manhandled off at the next stop and fined 80 euro. This happened to my friend Laura when we were in Berlin, and I only include mention of it in this story because I feel like everyone should know their train system is trash.


	5. Chapter 5

The Drake had miraculously clean floors. Hermann rocked his heel up and down on the shiny black linoleum and didn’t hear the telltale crackle of sticky, half dried beer coming up with his foot. This would make for an easier escape when he inevitably needed to bolt twenty minutes from now, at least.

He couldn’t believe he let Dietrich talk him into this. Well, he could, in a sense. Dietrich would always be the oldest, cheerfully domineering in his quest to make Hermann change into jeans and a shirt without buttons up the front. He practically shoved him out the front door, Sally on his hip, instructing her to “say bye-bye! Say he’s not allowed to come home until at least midnight!” 

Still. He felt ridiculous, milling in a crowd of a few dozen in front of an empty stage, the long, low room painted black with neon paint that stood out like shocks splattered on the walls. He was the only person in the club who wasn’t wearing leather.

He made his way to the bar, ordered an obscenely expensive shot of Jagermeister, and downed it in one.

“Hermann! You are here!” Mako called in horribly accented German. She had half her hair pulled up, to show off her blue streaks, and netted tights. He smiled weakly.

“Hello M–” He noticed Newt, trailing a few feet behind her. Tight-lipped, arms crossed, and definitely _not_ working the torn black jeans hugging his legs.

“I didn’t think this was your kind of place, Grandpa.” Newt said by way of greeting.

Hermann tried to swallow, but found himself slightly frozen in place. All he managed, in a very soft voice, was “is that a crack about–”

Newt’s eyes flicked down to his cane, and then went huge. “No! Shit, _no_. I’m not an asshole.” Hermann raised an eyebrow. “I’m not _that big_ an asshole,” Newt amended. “I meant your whole–” he waved at Hermann’s clothes, his face, his whole being. “Look, how old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“You act like you’re three times that. You talk like you’re in a regency novel.”

Hermann glanced at Mako. “This is him apologizing?”

“Apologizing? What the hell am I apologizing for?” Newt said.

Mako closed her eyes, laced her fingers together and stretched over her head. “I am going to tune my bass. We only get to perform four songs before Nueva Ramos goes on,” she cut a glance at Newt. “Do not lose track of time.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Hermann rolled his eyes. Newt had far too much attitude for someone whose band was only an _opener._ Mako slipped back through the crowd, to where Raleigh sat on the edge of the stage, drumming his sticks against his knees.

Newt shoved both his hands into his pockets and tilted his head, looking at Hermann like he didn’t quite understand him as a concept. “What are you doing here?”

“Mako invited me.”

_“Why?”_

Hermann clapped both hands on his cane and leaned in. “My foot is feeling fine now, thank you for asking.”

Newt licked his lips and pressed them together, the tiniest bit abashed. He glanced back at the stage. “Well, it’s a free country. Hang out if you want.”

“Oh, how gracious of you to grant me permission to stand in a public venue.”

“See, there’s those totally normal speech patterns,” Newt said, but he softened slightly. “I almost didn’t recognize you without Sally on your arm.”

“Yes, well…she’s too young for a place like this.”

Newt laughed. He laughed so easily, like the world just rolled over his head and down his back. Hermann wondered what that was like, to not be afraid of every conversation. “Um, yeah. Good call, Daddy.”

The use of the name sent an uncomfortable jolt through Hermann’s stomach, and he had trouble swallowing for a second time, for an entirely different reason.

Newt went pink under his freckles in the silence. He coughed and took two steps backwards. “I gotta go do sound check, I–” he threw his hands out to either side in a _fuck it_ motion. “Have a good night.”

Hermann went back to the bar and downed two more shots. His heart knocked steadily against his chest, and then his throat. He had a horrible, uneasy feeling bubbling up, one he’d been successfully avoiding since the Incident.

He heard it in his head with a capital I, something that cleaved his romantic life into two sections–before Incident and after Incident.

After Incident Hermann didn’t do this. He didn’t awkwardly flirt at clubs in Berlin, with men who might not have even been… it didn’t matter. He wanted to go home, sit somewhere quiet and alone.

“Hey _Berlinnnnn!_ ”

Hermann jumped. Newt and Mako were onstage, Raleigh sitting behind them on his drums. Newt was nearly making out with the microphone, holding it with both hands hard against his lips, his guitar hanging loose behind his back.

“We are Gipsy Danger–” behind him, Raleigh mouthed something that looked like _no we’re not,_ “–and we’re gonna kick off with one I think you all know.”

Newt, it turned out, really liked The Killers. He bookended the band’s two original songs with “Somebody Told Me” and “When You Were Young”. He and Mako bounced around the edge of the stage, black-painted fingers tapping up and down the necks of their guitar and bass. The lights flared out into the audience and Hermann felt his panic dissipate. He didn’t feel like himself in the moment. He was floating from the drinks, from the floor vibrating with every crash of the drums.

“ _He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus/But he talks like a gentlemen/_ _Like you imagined when you were young,_ ” Newt glanced downstage, winking at Hermann as he sang the line.

Hermann couldn’t help it. He laughed.

He let himself move with the music, because in the swirling lights and noise he wasn’t his stiff, awkward self, he wasn’t somebody’s dad. He was just a guy with no baggage, dancing on a hot Berlin night, watching Newt lean into the mic, his face lit and elated.

Hermann had planned to leave right after Gipsy Danger wrapped their set, curtly fulfilling his obligation to Mako, but another drink had somehow made it into his hand–which was starting to grow numb, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d drank enough to lose feeling in his extremities–and he found himself sitting with the band, watching the real headliners, all the way there from Spain.

Raleigh and Newt argued about possible band names for awhile–“Well, I needed to call us something!” “Then say one of the names I suggested!” “Cherno Alpha doesn’t even make sense!”–and Hermann let his head drop against the top of the cushioned booth, listening to the lead singer of Nueva Ramos chant in Spanish. 

He was suddenly aware of breath in his ear. Newt was talking to him, leaning in dangerously close to be heard over the music and the crowd. “I think it’s really cool, what you’re doing with Sally,” he said.

“Mmm?” 

“My, um, my mom ran out on me when I was about her age. My dad’s the best, don’t get me wrong, we ended up totally fine, it’s, um, it’s just really awesome she has two parents to watch out for her.” He rubbed the back of his neck and laughed at nothing in particular. “Wow, three margs in and I’m in TMI mode.”

“That’s alright,” Hermann said. He was feeling looser than usual himself, his face warm and his limbs heavy. He didn't recoil even as Newt continued to breathe inches from his face. He was still sweating from his dramatics onstage, and Hermann could  _smell_ him, the heady musk of _man._

Across the table, Raleigh leaned in, nuzzling against Mako’s neck, whispering in her ear. Her knees knocked against the table as she sat up straight. Pink colored her pale complexion.

“We have to–go get more drinks,” she said. Raleigh nodded, a giggly smile breaking across his face.

“Yeah, it’s gonna take us a long time.”

“Oh my God, just don’t get caught in the bathroom again,” Newt called as they slipped out of the booth. “We cannot get barred from another club!” He turned back to Hermann. “God, teenagers, right? We’re all so crazy at that age.”

Hermann smiled up at the ceiling. “I wasn’t.”

Newt hiccuped, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “No? Mmkay, wait, I told you about my fucked up family, now you have to tell me something I didn’t know about you. For balance.”

“I grew up in Bavaria.”

“No shit, I can tell every time you open your mouth. You got that country boy accent.”

“Well, you sound like you learned German in South Boston.”

“I did!”

“I started sleeping with a colleague,” Hermann blurted out.

He’d never said it out loud, so bluntly before. Even Vanessa only found out through the whispers of a mutual friend. God, he shouldn’t be drinking. He groaned and pressed his fist to the side of his head. “I apologize, that was too personal.”

Newt grinned. “Personal and saucy.” He leaned in to hear the rest.

“He was married.”

“Even saucier.”

“To a woman.”

“Oh, shit.” Newt’s smile dropped.

A wave of nausea that had nothing to do with all he had to drink rolled through Hermann’s stomach. “Quite.”

He had known about Alison. Perhaps there would have been some saving face if he hadn’t, if he could spin it off as the lonely, taken-in math professor who never looked up from his books long enough to realize he was hurting someone.

But he had known, he had met her a handful of times when Tendo brought her to department functions or the Christmas party. He’d let himself be fucked in an office where he could see pictures from their _wedding_. She was a real person, married to one of the most cheerful and beloved computer science professors at Oxford, and Hermann was the weird interloper who’d ruined the their life together.

“Hermann? You okay?” Newt asked. Hermann felt himself pulled back to the present, but only halfway.

“She called me a slut,” he said. He attempted to smile, but his lip trembled. “I must admit, I’ve been called a lot of things, but that was a first.”

Alison had appeared in front of his vision suddenly during a passing period, stepping out of nowhere in the middle of the quadrangle. Her face was so red, her veins popping out; she looked in danger of bursting a blood vessel. “You little slut!” she shouted, as students and colleagues alike stopped to stare. “Just because everyone thinks you’re a stuck up freak doesn’t give you the right to sleep with other people’s husbands!”

Hermann had tried to speak, to apologize or defend himself he didn’t know. But he felt frozen in the back of his mind, like this was happening to someone else. At least a hundred pairs of eyes were on him, standing in his rumpled button-up, three heavy books clutched to his chest like a child.

Alison reared back, looking like she was going to smack him in the face, but Dr. Sugimoto intervened and pulled her away before she could do any physical damage. “You are _pathetic,_ Hermann!” She spat over her shoulder. “You’re pathetic and you’re going to be alone for a long time if this is how you treat people!”

“Shit, man.” Newt reached over and clapped his hand on Hermann’s knee. Hermann looked up at the ceiling, trying in vain to force his face back into some semblance of calm.

Newt squeezed his leg reassuringly. Hermann failed his task and let his face crumble.

“Oh, hey, it’s okay. You’re all good,” Newt said, his voice only slightly betraying his panic.

“She’s right. I am pathetic. I’m crying in a discotheque.” Hermann wiped his eyes on the back of his hand, but when he looked up, Newt seemed to be fighting a smile. “What?”

“Did you just call this club a _discotheque?_ Seriously, are you one hundred years old? Do you have that Benjamin Button disease?”

Hermann let out a watery chuckle. “I forgot the word ‘club’ in English. This happens whenever I come home, the German starts reasserting dominance.”

“Dude, I do that whenever I go back to Boston after a long time here. I stood at customs snapping my fingers and trying to remember the word ‘passport’ for like five minutes, I swear they almost detained me. Perils of being bilingual.” Hermann laughed again, taking a deep breath to try and calm down.

“You’re not pathetic, by the way.” Newt still hadn’t let go of his leg. “You’ve got an impressive, if boring sounding job. You have Sally!” Newt pointed at Hermann’s chest, pleased at this point. “That is a cool kid. A pathetic person couldn’t make a kid like that.”

“I didn’t even like him, in a romantic sense,” Hermann managed to steady his voice. “I was just… lonely.”

“I get it. Meaningless sex is a part of life.”

Hermann looked at Newt’s hand, and then up at Newt. He had a strange, heavy-lidded expression on his face. He licked his lips again.It was a look that said _fuck it._ A look that said _I won’t tell anyone if you don’t._

Newt drank stupid, overly flavored cocktails, the kind where the drinker can’t even tell how much alcohol they’re sucking down until it’s too late.

Hermann could taste it on his lips.


	6. Chapter 6

Hermann Gottlieb didn’t have sex in public bathrooms. He barely had sex in _beds_ , could count the number of intimate encounters in his life on his hands with two fingers to spare.

But Hermann Gottlieb also didn’t sleep with married men. He didn’t go to clubs in Berlin after spending an entire week with his daughter, who didn’t die or declare she hated him. He didn’t get drunk with his brother’s upstairs neighbor and stick his tongue down said neighbor’s throat, in plain view of God and the entire population of The Drake.

Maybe it was time to expand the parameters of what Hermann Gottlieb did and didn’t do.

“ _Excellent,_ ” Newt murmured, in between kisses. His fingers went to Hermann’s long, pale neck, thumb brushing against his jaw. “Knew you had a fun side, Professor Gottlieb.”

Hermann sucked on Newt’s bottom lip before lowly growling, “ _Doctor_.”

“Aw jeez,” Newt rolled his eyes. “You’re one of those.”

Newt slid over him in the booth, the mere brush of his ass against Hermann’s thighs sent another sharp hit of desire running through the pit of his stomach and straight to his cock. Newt landed on his feet in front of the table and held out his hand.

And Hermann took it. Newt heaved him up, pulling him dazed through the crowd of dancing, sweating club goers, the bassline of the Nueva Ramos shaking the floorboards.

Newt kicked shut the toilet lid in the disabled stall and pushed Hermann down to sit on it, straddling him with knees on each narrow side.

“Just fun, right?” Newt asked, breathless.

“Meaningless sex is a part of life,” Hermann quoted back at him, and Newt kissed him hard in response.

Hermann let his cane drop on the floor–he’d worry about how disgusting and disease ridden it was later–and raked his hands up through Newt’s hair. He tugged a little at the roots and was rewarded by Newt _mewling,_ an involuntarily little whimper. He rolled his hips against Hermann’s. When Hermann gasped in return, Newt opened his eyes, a mischievous light behind them.

For a terrifying second Hermann thought he’d been had, this was some sort of sick prank and Newt was about to say something devastating and humiliating and he knew it, this is why he’d sworn off _men_ and _sex_ and connecting to _other people_ –

“I’m giving you beard burn,” Newt laughed.

Hermann gently touched his own chin and realized Newt was right. His stubble was rubbing Hermann’s skin pink and raw. He found he didn’t mind.

Newt grinned, all loose and drunk, and resumed kissing him. Hermann let both hands drop and slide down Newt’s torso, feeling his ribs sticking out through his tee-shirt. He dug under the waistband of his tight jeans, and _Gott en himmel_ , Newt wasn’t wearing underwear. Of _course_ he wasn’t. A guitar player with no underwear was sitting half-hard on Hermann’s lap-who wasn't doing a spectacular job tamping down his own arousal.

“Wanna ride you,” Newt murmured in his ear, and Hermann squeezed his bare inner thigh.

There was oxygen in his lungs again.

They finished only a few minutes later. The Drake’s bathroom stalls weren’t built for long, indulgent lovemaking, and Hermann’s leg was started to cramp from Newt’s weight going up and down on his lap. He delicately pulled out, peeling off the condom that Newt briefly ran out of the stall and bought from the machine by the sink.

Newt jumped up, his face still flushed, and started shimmying back into his pants from where he’d tossed them on the floor.

“That is disgusting,” Hermann said mildly, leaning back against the basin of the toilet and trying to catch his breath. He balled up a few sheets of toilet paper and cleaned himself up as best he could, tossing another wad for Newt to do the same.

“Relax, you could tell if someone puked in here.”

“No, this entire building just smells like alcohol and subsequent poor choices.” Reluctantly, Hermann began putting his own outfit back together, fighting the lethargy that always gripped him post-orgasm.

Newt patted down his hair, which Hermann had nearly knotted in his passionate grip. “No, trust me, hydrochloric acid mixed with potassium and sodium chloride is very noticeable. You can tell.”

Hermann blinked. “Did you just… list the chemicals in vomit?”

“Gastric acid, technically,” Newt said, and his eyes were suddenly looking a few inches to the left of Hermann’s face. “Biology major, it’s my party trick.”

“A biologist barista with rockstar aspirations, this really is the city for everything.”

“I said biology major, not biologist. _Biologist_ would imply I graduated.” Newt clapped his hands together. “That was fun, thanks. I’m gonna step out, have a cigarette, catch you later."

“May I join you?” Hermann normally wouldn’t ask, but he was still drunk and relaxed, too relaxed to care about the stunned expression that briefly passed over Newt’s face: He had not expected Hermann to extend this.

“You smoke?” Newt said dubiously. “You smoke tobacco cigarettes?”

“Occasionally. Not in front of Sally.” He hastened to add.

“Aren’t you in front of Sally like once a month?”

“So you understand the flexible definition of ‘occasionally’.”

* * *

The backside of The Drake was a glorified alleyway, a few concrete stairs looking out onto the back of another building with long narrow windows, most of which were dark. Newt and Hermann sat down on the top step and Newt lit them both up with a neon purple lighter.

“The cigarette after sex is _very_ continental,” Newt said. “In America, people freak out, lung cancer this, lung cancer that, but it’s _so_ nice. It calms me down after shows too. Even opening tonight, when the crowd is just so into it, I– _God,_ do you have anything that just makes you feel so perfectly alive?”

Hermann thought about the feeling of euphoria he experienced when he solved a particularly difficult equation. He thought about the warmth that filled him when Sally hugged his leg on the train.

He leaned back on his elbows and pointed up into the dark Berlin sky. The light pollution wasn’t as terrible in this dark, industrial part of the city, and he could still make out a few choice stars.

“The Plough is much farther to the west in Germany than in England. It was the first constellation I could plot as a child.” He remembered how thrilled he’d been, after half an hour with his telescope in the family’s garden, how deeply and instantly he had felt the connection between a weedy seven-year-old and the massive, unknown universe a few miles above his head.

“You mean the Big Dipper?” Newt said, leaning back to join Hermann in his slight tilt, his eyes following where Hermann pointed.

“I suppose, if you want to call it by its incorrect American name. Here in Germany, it’s called the Great Wagon, which I also find lacking.”

Newt turned his head, tongue-in-cheek. “...you named your daughter after Sally Ride, didn’t you?”

Hermann nodded, still looking up. “You are the first person who has ever caught that.”

Newt tapped his own chest. “Isaac Newton.”

“ _No._ ”

“My dad was a fan. Not as cool as Sally though. First woman in space.”

“ _Third_ woman in space,” Hermann corrected.“But Vanessa thought ‘Valentina’ or ‘Svetlana’ were mouthfuls. Ikotidem is already a difficult surname for British people to say, ‘Sally’ will lead to less bullying.”

“First _lesbian_ in space,” Newt countered. “Gotta pay tribute to our forebears.”

Hermann smiled. “Very true.”

"Wait, your baby mama is Vanessa Ikotidem? Like, the model?"

"You're familiar?"

Newt reared his head back, bewildered. "Most people with a passing interest in the female body are. She's _smoking_ , she was in this magazine–"

"That is quite enough, thank you. She's my friend."  _My best friend. My only friend. Is she still my only...are we...friends?_ "We used to be in maths club together." 

Newt took another drag and shook his head. "You are something else, Dr. Gottlieb."

They continued to look up at the faint expression of the heavens above them. Newt’s breathing slowed.

“Why didn’t you become an astronaut?” He asked.

Hermann knocked his cane twice against the concrete steps in answer. “Why didn’t you finish your biology degree?”

Newt sat up and smushed his cigarette out. “Dude, this isn’t a date.”

“Of course not.”

“So you don’t have to know everything about me.” He stood and crossed his arms. “I’m gonna go load our equipment, make sure we get paid, and go dig Mako and Raleigh out of whatever gross place straight people fuck in.”

 _Because where you just rode my cock was so pristine._ “Of course, I should be getting home.”

“See you later,” Newt said, his back already turned to the door. “Buy Sally some earplugs, we’re practicing again tomorrow night.”

“That won’t be necessary. We’re finding a new apartment.”

“Sure you are!” Newt called, and let the door back into the club slam behind him.

Hermann smiled, and carefully climbed down the stairs to the street. He fished his phone out of the back pocket of his pants, to look up the train schedule, trying to remember in his tipsy haze if trains even ran this late.

His heart stopped.

Fourteen missed calls from Dietrich.


	7. Chapter 7

_Her name is Sally Elizabeth Ikotidem. She’s four years old. She’s biracial. She has brown eyes and black hair. I don’t know how tall she is. I don’t know how much she weighs. I don’t know if she has any identifying birthmarks._ Hermann repeated the list over and over in his head. He sat in the backseat of the taxi he’d flagged down at the corner where the alley met the street, waving and shouting half out of his mind. He had to know these things, especially if he was walking into a kidnapping, a missing child, any number of terrifying maybes.

But he didn’t.

The car ride felt fifty years long.

When he finally, finally got back to the apartment, two figures stood outside, under the streetlights. Dietrich, with a stout woman in a polizei uniform. Hermann felt the alcohol repeat in his mouth. The cab slammed to a halt in front of the building and they both looked over. Dietrich immediately threw both his hands up in surrender.

“ _What did you do?_ ” Hermann bounded out of the car as fast as his body could manage, shouting in a grammatically horrifying mix of German and English.  

“She’s fine, she’s fine!”

“ _Fourteen phone calls! No message!_ ”

“Is this the father?” The polizei woman asked, clipped and serious.

“ _Where is my daughter?_ ” Hermann’s throat was starting to scratch from shouting. In the dim logic center of his brain, the phrase echoed with significance. _My daughter._ He had never called her that so fluidly, so naturally. So _loudly._

The polizei leaned over and sniffed his shirt. “Sir, have you been drinking?”

Dietrich reached over and held Hermann’s face in both his hands, like he did when they were children and wanted him to focus on the human in front of him instead of whatever was happening in his head. “Sally got very upset when she woke up and you weren’t there. She ran out of the apartment and got herself to the train station.”

“Get off of me!” Hermann jerked out of Dietrich’s grip, feeling all of eight years old.

“I chased after her, I did!” Dietrich said. “I caught her at the Schlesisches Tor platform, and she just started screaming–”

“ _‘No, stop, put me down, I don’t want you, I want my Mummy,’_ ” the polizei officer finished in almost accentless English, crossing her arms over her chest. “Naturally, we became concerned.”

“I was trying to explain I wasn’t kidnapping her, I’m her uncle, and they say ‘do you have any identification’ and I say ‘no, i just chased after her in my socks’ and while this one was accusing me of child abduction Sally got loose and tripped over a bench and so she was a little bit of a broken wrist.” Dietrich finished in a rush and cringed, waiting for the explosion.

Hermann pushed by them both and hobbled up the front stairs. His hand was shaking as he twisted the doorknob of Apartment A.

Sally has sitting on the couch, watching German-language cartoons. Her left arm was wrapped in bright pink gauze, from her wrist up to her elbow. Her arms were so small. He never fully appreciated how little she was.

“Hello,” He said softly, far calmer now that he had eyes on her. Sally flipped around on the couch, her dark eyes red-rimmed from crying.

“I don’t want you!” She screeched. “I want Mummy!”

“I’m sorry you got hurt,” he tried feebly. He reached out, to gently pat her head. She reached up with her free hand and smacked him away, and started wailing, kicking her feet against the couch.

“ _Go away!_ ”

“You do not hit me,” Hermann managed, though he was sure his facial expression was far more stunned then authoritative.

 _“I hate you!”_ Sally jumped off the couch and ran into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Hermann sat down on the couch, dropped like dead weight. There was a creaking behind him, and Dietrich and the officer came around to stare at him on the couch.

“Sir, I need to see identification proving that child is your daughter,” she said briskly, and Hermann hated her for it. Why was this becoming so frequent in his life, sitting before people accusing him of being some deviant life ruiner? A terrible man, a terrible member of the faculty, a terrible father.

He handed his wallet to the officer and cut a glance to Dietrich. “You irresponsible fool,” he said in Welsh, so the officer wouldn’t intervene. Dietrich flushed.

“This is not my fault,” he said, stilted and awkward; neither of them were as fluent in their mother’s native tongue as she or Karla, but Dietrich always had the most trouble grasping it. “It was an accident.”

“Who lets a child run out the front door in a strange city? She can’t even read signs in English, let alone German!”

“ _Hey_ ,” Dietrich drew up to his full height, arms locked on either side. “I was doing you a favor, you were the one out drinking and not answering my calls!”

“ _Pen coc_ , _”_ Hermann spit, and Dietrich, even redder with anger, stepped forward. Before either of the Gottliebs could escalate the situation, the officer handed Hermann back his British license and Sally's passport, which he carefully stowed in a plastic bag. _Great job Gottlieb, taking better care of the documents than the person._

“It’s very dangerous to let a child her age run off like that,” the officer said. “See that this doesn’t happen again.”

Hermann inhaled deep, deep until his lungs hurt. “Thank you, officer,” he managed in soft, shaky German. He had the bizarre urge to salute her, but managed to keep his twitching hand against his leg.

“Yeah, thanks,” Dietrich said, still glaring at Hermann. Neither of them moved until she left the apartment, her boots scraping on the sidewalk. Hermann broke eye contact first, looking down at his leg and rubbing his thigh. Bathroom-stall sex followed by panicked running was not something his physical therapist would have recommended.

“She’s fine,” Dietrich said again, rubbing his elbows.

“She has a broken wrist!"

“Which is not dead! It’s not permanently crip–” Dietrich swallowed the end of the sentence, but it was too late. Hermann tried to breathe again, but his vision swam with rage for several seconds.

“I’m taking Sally to a hotel.”

“What? Come on, because I said that? I didn’t mean it like that!”

Hermann heaved himself up leaning on his offending cane. “Don’t be so dramatic. We need to find our own place. You’re right, I should have been here. I clearly can’t trust anyone else–”

“Oh _fuck off,_ Herms."Dietrich’s face, which had been slowly fading back to human skin color, flared up again. “It’s not like you know what you’re doing either! You don’t think I see how many of my candy bars you give her? You’re going to give her diabetes! I’m surprised something worse didn’t happen before this!”

Hermann felt a large weight sock him in the stomach, but he tried to keep his face impassive. “Goodbye, Dietrich.”

Sally kicked and screamed the entire time Hermann packed up their things, as a dehydration headache started to bloom. Dietrich stormed upstairs, like he was sixteen and not thirty-five, and Hermann felt a grim sense of satisfaction when nobody answered the door. Gispy Danger was still out, happy and free. They didn’t witness the explosion of reality on their own lawn. His brother didn’t come back into the apartment, must have walked the block until he was sure they were gone.

“I don’t want to go! I want Mummy!” Sally screamed. “I don’t want you!”

Hermann couldn’t lift her up, so he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pinned her as tightly as he could against his side.

“Well, unfortunately for you, I am what you have.”

Sally started crying and clutching her arm again, and it took almost the whole taxi ride to the hotel to calm her down. For this, she got Hermann’s strongest pang of sympathy. He was no stranger to being a child with a limb that felt like it was going to kill you. He broke one of his own painkillers into quarters and fed her a piece.

Sally was not accustomed to taking medicine in pill form and it set off another ten minutes of weeping. Hermann almost considered taking the rest himself, see if he could make himself float until this situation worked itself out. His phone buzzed, but he didn’t recognize the number and didn’t open the text message.

The concierge must have thought they were tourists, asked when they had gotten in from England. They were, in a way. Hermann considered how he was a citizen of two countries and yet didn’t feel at home in either of them. _Children of two worlds,_ his mother used to call him and his siblings. Damn Dietrich. He didn’t want to think about his family right now.

Sally curled into a ball in one of the twin beds, breathing gently. He sighed and looked at her, her encased wrist sprawled out from under the covers, hanging off the edge of the mattress. He leaned over and lifted her arm back flat on the sheets.

Having a kid meant you couldn’t stop thinking about family, ever. Didn’t it?

His phone buzzed again, and he got up, walking to the window, looking at the messages.

_heyyyy we’re going to this after hours club over the river you wanna come?_

_have you evert done LSD it’s incredible i know it’s kinda cliche for musicans but its awesome even though it makes you really sweaty_

And now, a third text popped up, another green block pushing the stack of messages higher.

_I know you’re a boring dad who does math for a living but you’re a good lay who should live a little_

Newt. In the chaos he’d barely given him a thought. They must have exchanged number in the drunkest point of the night. He texted back without adding a the number to his contacts.

_Not tonight, thank you._

Hermann carefully placed the phone face-up on the nightstand next to Sally’s head and sat down on the edge of her bed.

What would’ve happened if tonight’s catastrophe hadn’t occurred? Would he have turned around on the train back to the club? Would he have lost himself in music and more alcohol? Would Newt have kissed him again, moaned against his neck again? Would they talk again, after sex that didn’t end with a tinge of guilt in the orgasm, something he hadn't realized was weighing down his previous sexual experience until he had a man who smiled through the whole act in his lap?

Or was he not that kind of man, despite his earlier belief that he could change, that his life could change?

He didn’t think he could.

It was just as late in Paris; there was no need to call Vanessa with this news until tomorrow. More cowardly than considerate, he was smart enough to recognize that about himself. He watched Sally sleep until his own eyes grew heavy and he felt himself tipping onto his side.

“Hermann?”

“Mmm?” He jerked back up, bleary-eyed. Sally was awake, but hadn’t moved. She stared straight ahead with shining eyes, fixed on something outside the window.

“Did you break your leg? Am I gonna have to get a stick for my arm?” On the word _arm,_ her voice cracked and she started crying again. Hermann swallowed and shifted up the bed. He gathered her in his arms and rubbed her back; another unconscious skill he didn’t used to have.

“No, your arm is going to heal, you’ll be back to normal in just eight weeks.”

“I don’t want a stick like you!” She sniffled. Hermann reminded himself not to be offended, but it didn’t entirely work. Make Rude Comments About Hermann's Disability Day was not something he needed right now.

“You won’t have one.” He let his chin rest on the top of her head. “I promise.”

“I want Mummy,” she said again.

Hermann, exhausted and feeling more hungover by the minute, laughed through his nose. “Yes, I do too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pen coc - Welsh for "Dickhead"


	8. Chapter 8

The _D_ _enkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas,_ or Memorial to the Murdered Jews, is made of 2,711 slabs of concrete on a sloping field in southwestern Berlin. When a person walks the narrow pathways in between the stelae, they rise only a few inches off the ground. But as one walks further in, the ground dips below them, the large stone blocks suddenly shoot up, over six feet, blocking out the sun.

Hermann hadn’t walked through the memorial since he was fifteen, the year it opened. Dietrich had invited Karla, Bastien and him to stay in his dorm that day so they could all attend the ceremony, something about their history and remembrance. It had been hot outside and Hermann, fresh off Leg Surgery #4, had barely made it twenty feet in before he fell and had to escorted to a nearby bench by Karla.

One sensation remained with him, echoing in memory as he wandered around the edges with a nearly silent Sally. How unexpectedly fast the stones rose up around him.

One wrong step and he was in over his head.

His phone rang and he was grateful to step away; several tourists were taking selfies while sitting on top of the stelae, and if he could do anything for Sally, it would be to keep her from growing up to be the kind of person who did that.

The acid in his stomach churned at the Caller ID, but he took a long breath, tightened his grip on his cane, and answered it.

“Hello Vanessa,” he said softly.

“ _Hey,_ ” she said cheerfully, and Hermann hated that more than if she’d answered the phone screaming, because he knew how much it was about to change. “ _Why are you whispering, are you at a museum?_ ”

“Monument.”

“ _Holocaust?_ ”

“Sally broke her wrist.”

A pause. “ _That’s not a holocaust_.”

“Vanessa, be serious.” He explained the incident. Much to his annoyance, he found himself repeating many of Dietrich’s words. _Accident. No one’s fault. She’s fine. Everything’s fine._ “I’m profusely sorry.”

Vanessa clicked her tongue on the other end of the line. “ _Let me talk to her_.”

Hermann handed Sally the phone. Her face transformed when she heard her mother’s voice. “Mummy!” she beamed. Hermann looked away, glanced across the top of the lines of stelae. There was a line of restaurants and small cafés on the other side of the square. He needed to get out of the heat, maybe get a coffee so he could focus on something besides Vanessa realizing what a huge mistake she had made in trusting him. He guided Sally into a coffee shop at the corner, holding her by her good elbow.

 _Daddy’s taking good care of you, right?_ He heard Vanessa say, faintly through the speaker. He coughed loudly and leaned over the counter so he didn’t have to hear Sally’s answer.

“ _Kann ich einen kleinen Tee bekommen und_ -oh, bollocks.”

Newt grinned at him, crossing his arms over his apron. “Are you obsessed with me or something?”

“You work in _this_ shop. Of course you do.” Hermann’s face felt hot. After the club, after the things he _did there_ with Newt, it seemed almost indecent to stay and look at him in the light, with children and tourists around.

“Newt, I got stuff on my arm like you,” Sally, still on the phone with her mother, raised her cast in the air. She showed no surprise at seeing Newt at random; she knew about four people total in Germany, perhaps she assumed they were just naturally going to show up everywhere she went.

But Newt did something very strange. His left hand clapped over his right wrist, and something akin to panic flared up in his eyes. Hermann looked down at the row of thick leather bracelets tight against his skin.

“She means your tattoos." When he looked back up, Newt’s unusual reaction was nowhere to be found. 

“Yeah you do, rock star. I like the purple.” He said cheerfully to Sally. His eyes flicked to Hermann. “You gonna order something? There’s other people who need caffeine.”

“The tea and a chocolate cookie for Sally–to go.” Dietrich was right, he was going to send her home with cavities. He turned to grab Sally and found she was already sitting at an empty table in the corner, still talking animatedly on the photo. His face must have turned helpless, because Newt reached over the counter and gripped his shoulder.

“I’ll bring it over to you.”

* * *

Vanessa wasn’t screaming or vocally shaking with rage when Sally handed the phone back. She just sounded tired.

“ _I have a shoot I have to get to before we lose the morning light. I’ll call you later. Maybe we can talk about some changes._ ”

“Vanessa, I really am so sorry.”

“ _Yeah,_ ” she said. “ _I know._ ”

Hermann closed his eyes and pressed his phone against his forehead. He felt a hand on his knee and first thought it was Sally, but realized it was too big almost instantly.

Newt picked Sally up, sat down in her seat, and held her in his lap. She was playing something on his phone. Their order was on the table in front of her, and he was staring at Hermann with mild interest. 

“So. Dude. What the hell? Did you move out of Deet’s?”

“I–what–you’re at work!” Hermann sputtered.

“I’m on break!” Newt mimicked, high and warbley, and Sally giggled. “See, Sally Ride gets it.” He pushed his hair back, and Hermann saw he had freckles thick even on his forehead. “So what happened? Your brother said you and Sally bolted, waved me off and said you were being an _arschloch_ , and then that Mila girl I’m pretty sure he’s fucking walked up to get him for work and he ran off.”

Hermann swallowed his anger, stored it in his chest for later. “Do not swear in front of her.”

Newt rolled his eyes. “Look at her. She’s looking at a screen, dead to the world. This generation, I swear to God–”

“Yes. I did move. I found a two bedroom on Reichenberger Street to let.” This was stretching the truth; he had spent the morning looking at pictures of the flat on his phone and speaking briefly with it’s current occupant, but he hadn’t moved anything out of the hotel room. Still though, he could picture them there already. Sally had her own bedroom, a place where she could pretend to read her  _Paddington_ books and play with her dolls away from Hermann, who was clearly ruining her.

Mostly, he just wanted Newt to stop talking. Hermann took a sip of his tea and found it bitter, wanting sugar. He took another sip anyway.

“Why?”

Hermann glanced at Sally, who really was engrossed at some sort of bright puzzle game on Newt’s phone. “ _Auf Deutsch._ ”

“Yeah, okay.” Newt switched over to German without missing a beat. “Is it to do with this broken wrist?”

“I was not looking out for her. She got frightened in a strange country, and I was out with you.”

Newt’s eyes hardened. “You’re gonna put this on me?”

“No. I’m blaming me. I can’t…” Hermann clicked his jaw, cast a look out the cafe’s wide window without really seeing anything. “I never learned how to be more than one thing.”

Newt paused, brows crinkling. Hermann could tell he was trying to figure out if he’d mistranslated something in his head.

“What I mean to say,” he elaborated. “Is that I am a maths professor. I’m really very good at being a maths professor."

"Fields Medal recipient at age 25, nothing to sneeze at," Newt agreed. Off of Hermann's quizzical look– "I-I may have Googled you."

A strange warmth filled Hermann's stomach, but he tried to ignore it. “Yes, well. I couldn’t be a maths professor and have...um, relations. A marriage ended up destroyed. I came here, I tried to take care of my daughter, and she got hurt because I was off being a guy who drinks and has–”

“Bathroom relations?” Newt said. “Fuck, no, that sounds bad.”

“And now I’m on fragile ground with my brother because I can’t be a sibling and a father at the same time. So I needed to start over, get away from everything–” _everyone_  “–and focus on the most important component of my life.”

“Taking care of Sally.”

Hermann nodded. Newt absently started to play with the beads at the end of one of Sally’s braids.

“Don’t touch my hair,” Sally said, still focused on the game. A shocked chuckle escaped Hermann and Newt lifted both hands like he was being robbed.

“I think Sally’s doing a pretty good job taking care of herself.”

Hermann downed half his cup of tea, even though it wasn’t cold enough to drink in such large quantities and burned his throat. “Are you going to miss me, Newton?”

“Yeah, totally, gonna write your name in my diary a hundred times every night.” Newt picked Sally’s cookie off the table and took a bite. “Also, I think you’re being kind of stupid. I’m a million things all at once and none of them have destroyed any of the other.”

“Oh really?” Hermann nodded at Newt's person. Newt froze, the cookie halfway to his mouth for a second bite, a pose that was almost comical.

“‘Oh really’ _what?_ ” He said, voice higher than his already screeching normal.

“You dropped out of MIT. Chose music and serving lattes over an exceptional education and an esteemed career,” Hermann said, suddenly cautious. “You picked your priorities just like I did.”

Newt’s shoulders dropped an inch. “Right.”

“What did you think I was going to say?”

“Dude, I get it, you’re very smart and all British and deductive reason-y. Stop looking at my wrists.”

“Wha–” Hermann’s phone started ringing, a photo of Dietrich at Yom Kippur six years prior filling the screen. He sent it to voicemail. “What are you talking about?” His phone immediately started to ring again. Newt shifted, looking now like he wished he didn’t have a child in his lap keeping him from running off.

A woman a decade older than either of them stopped at the edge of the table and tapped Newt's shoulder. “I'm sorry, I just had to tell you, you are a beautiful family,” she said in an American accent.

Hermann flinched. “Oh, we-“

“Danke,” Newt smiled, and for the second time that day he reached over their divide and touched Hermann, this time squeezing his hand. The warm feeling rose in Hermann. His phone ran again and he picked up, if only for something to drive it away.

“ _Gott en himmel,_ what?”

“There’s some _guy_ here for you,” Dietrich said, clipped and annoyed.

“A _guy?”_ Hermann said. “What guy?”

“What am I, your secretary? A guy got my address and said he knew you were staying here.”

Hermann was perplexed. The only man he’d made the acquaintance of since arriving in Berlin was sitting a foot away from him–and lived about ten feet above Dietrich to begin with. Newt’s right eye scrunched up in confusion. On the phone, a second person was getting annoyed with Hermann that day.

“He has a Korean last name and he says he knows you from Oxford and _he won’t leave._ ”

Hermann knocked against the table, his tea falling sideways and spilling onto the floor. Sally shrieked and tried to jump back, but Newt reflexively caught her, holding her tighter around her stomach. Hermann hung up and shoved his phone into his pocket.

“Jesus, what’s wrong?” Newt said in English. His expression darkened. “Is the apartment on fire?”

Hermann hung up and hastily threw a few napkins on the ground, which immediately turned soggy. “This is why,” he said still in German, gathering his cane and Sally’s bag, “I cannot be multiple things at once. I end up having to ask my one night stand to hold my sperm donation daughter while I talk to my married ex-lover who is currently at my brother’s apartment, looking for me.”

Newt blinked. He hoisted Sally higher onto his hip. “Yeah. It was a good idea to say that in German."


	9. Chapter 9

Newt, Hermann, and Sally had exactly one exchange on the seventeen minute train ride back to Dietrich’s apartment.

“When I meant watch Sally, I meant watch her in your shop,” Hermann said.

“I’m still on my break. And caffeine _also_ stunts the growth of children,” Newt said.

“Hermann, I wanna go on a boat,” Sally said, staring absentmindedly at an advertisement for Norwegian Cruise Lines plastered by the train cars door.

Hermann absently took Sally from Newt, drummed his fingers lightly against the stomach of her overalls.  They were orange, which led to an interesting color clash with her cast and glittery pink sneakers. Not that he was any authority on fashion.

 _What are you going to do?_ The loudest thought came cutting through his ruminations on toddler clothing. Hermann sighed and pressed his forehead against the back of Sally’s head. Her hair smelled just like Vanessa’s, she had probably packed the same coconut oil and jasmine shampoo she used on herself. He found himself transported back to university, to school, to the way Vanessa would run up and envelop him in her arms. She could always tell when he was upset, even if hadn’t yet said anything, even if he wasn’t looking her in the eye.

The train shuddered to a stop, and Hermann could see the upper windows of Dietrich’s apartment past the station. Newt reached over and squeezed Hermann’s good knee. “Hey, dude. Breathe. It’s gonna be okay.”

Hermann silently handed Sally back over, and and tightened his grip around the crook of his cane.

Nobody was outside the building when they arrived on the sidewalk, and for a wild second Hermann’s heart lifted, buoyed by the hope Tendo had gotten discouraged and left them all alone. Almost as soon as they drew parallel with the door, though, Dietrich poked his head out, and the tight, exhausted expression on his face told Hermann there was still an unwelcome guest in the apartment.

“There you are, I’ve been waiting for hours.”

“You’ve been waiting for twenty minutes,” Hermann said. Dietrich’s eyes slid over to Newt, bouncing Sally on his hip, but he didn’t say anything about it. He jerked his head inward.

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry if you were in anyway inconvenienced.” Hermann was often so dry people couldn’t tell when he was being sarcastic or not, but he heard Newt badly choke down a giggle. “Please, could you look after Sally while I–”

Dietrich’s eyebrows nearly flew up off his face. “You presume to ask me–after–”

“Hey! Sally! You ever paint your nails?” Newt blurt out, and both brothers started.

“Mummy painted them pink for Pam’s birthday,” Sally said.

Newt grinned, taking a step towards the front door. “Well, Mako has the coolest collection of colors ever. You want pink? You want glitter? You want alternating pink and glitter? We can do that.”

Hermann grabbed Newt’s shoulder before he started climbing the steps. “Newton, I–”

“It’s all good,” Newt said, and when Hermann continued to stare at him he shrugged. “Go deal with crazy ex-boyfriend. I got you.”

Hermann wanted to embrace him again, to hug him and kiss his forehead. Instead he nodded, his Adam’s apple hitching. “Sally, I will be upstairs in five minutes.”

Sally’s eyes narrowed, and again she reminded him so much of Vanessa he was startled. “Five minutes?”

“Three hundred seconds. Count it out with Newt. I promise.”

“Promise.”

“ _Versprechen._ ” And Hermann did lean forward then, kiss her forehead, and let Newt carry Sally up to Apartment B, where she was already counting, letting the numbers pile up on each other one by one for as many numbers as she even knew.

“Dietrich, go back inside.” Hermann said, leaning on his cane with both hands. Dietrich frowned.

“But–”

“Go to your living room. Go upstairs with Sally. I don’t care. Just get out of here.”

Dietrich rolled his eyes and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’re always so dramatic, little brother.”

“I learned at your feet.” Hermann looked towards the first floor windows, at the red checked curtains Mila had sewn out of old tablecloths. Someone had drawn them shut. “Tendo!” He called in English. “Come out here immediately.”

* * *

With the exception of dark circles, Tendo looked the same as he always did; suspenders, carefully combed hair, even a bowtie on his off hours. He was still lean, still had the large brown eyes that made Hermann first take notice of him. He smiled as he came down the stone steps, passing Dietrich as the latter slipped inside, looking wary.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a tee-shirt,” he said.

“You can’t be here,” Hermann replied, immediately and bluntly.

Tendo’s smile faded. He shook his head, leaning his elbow against the door frame. “I needed to see you, brother.”

“You can’t be here.” Hermann’s  mind seemed to be stuck like a record, only those four words forming and coming out with each rotation.

“Who was that guy? With the little girl?”

Hermann found a rush of gratitude towards the shut front door, an extra layer between Tendo and his family. Between Tendo and _Sally,_ rather. “That is not your concern.”

Tendo’s eyes stretched. “Do you have a _baby?_ ”

 _She’s clearly a toddler. She’s forming sentences._ “How can I help you leave the premises?”

Tendo sighed, rubbed his left eye with his fist. “You disappeared into the night, you’re not teaching summer sessions–”

“I did not disappear. I went home.”

“I went to your apartment by campus, and some Korean exchange student is letting your–”

“ _This_ is my home,” Hermann said without thought. “Germany is where I’m _from._ Forgive me for needing a change of scenery after a frankly humiliating episode at the hands of your wife.”

Tendo flinched, and came down another two steps. Hermann would keep talking, as long as it lured him farther away from the house. “That’s exactly what I needed to talk to you about. Alison kicked me out of our house, she won’t take any of my calls. Everything is so messed up.”

Hermann pursed his lips and nodded. The sun was really beating down, he could almost feel the back of his neck turning red. “I fail to see what your marital problems have to do with me.”

“This has everything to do with you, brother!”

“Stop calling me that. I wouldn’t do what we did with any brother of mine,” Hermann snapped, surprised by his own boldness.

Tendo came even closer; Hermann could reach out and drag him forward by his button-up is he wanted to. “I need you to talk to her. I know things got a little wild when she came to campus, but if you can just call her, explain it was a mistake and you wish you’d never–”

“You dare blame me for the entire ordeal?” Tendo was sweatier than he looked from a distance. Hermann was seized with the urge to whack him with his cane, but knew he wasn’t currently steady enough to stand up without it. “You are aware it takes two people to–”

“You’re the one who slept with a married man! That doesn’t exactly scream ‘functioning human adult’.” Tendo spit, and for a moment he looked absolutely mad, soaked in sweat with spittle on his bottom lip. Hermann shifted to hold his cane with one hand, not caring if he went down; if he managed to get a hit in before he fell it would be worth it. 

And then he heard the front door slam.

“So here’s the thing,” Newt said. He took his apron off as he spoke. “I have a lot of sympathy for people going through sexuality crises. We’ve all been there. Granted, I was fourteen, and I didn’t work through it by cheating on my wife. I mostly just watched _The X-Files_ a lot and jacked off to Scully and Mulder indiscriminately.”

Tendo blinked. “I don’t know who you are, buddy, but this is really none of your business.”

Newt smiled and bobbed his head to one side. “See, when you’re on _my_ front lawn, insulting _my_ friend in front of his daughter, it becomes my business.”

“Newton, listen to me, go back inside–” Hermann said, softly and carefully; the look on his face was eerily similar to Tendo's; did Hermann have a type? Slightly manic science geeks?

Tendo stepped up to Newt; unsurprisingly, he dwarfed him by several inches. “Do you want to make me your business?”

Newt clicked his tongue and looked off to the side. “Yeah, you wish buddy.”

Tendo swung at Newt. Newt ducked the first one, and shoved him back. “Go back to your wife and apologize for being a _pissnelke_ who can’t own up to his own shitty behavior.”

Tendo’s second punch nailed Newt in the corner of his right eye and he stumbled down.

“Oh my God, why all the violence?” Newt groaned, cupping his face. “What are we, straight?”

Hermann didn’t realize he’d lifted his cane up, pressed it into the side of Tendo’s neck, until he yelled “Christ, brother! You a swordsman now?”

Hermann took a deep breath, and behind Tendo he saw Dietrich running out. His actual brother, who had a good six inches and fifteen pounds on all of them, with his fists up, eyes flaring. The oldest sibling instinct to _lunge_ at whatever was currently a threat to Karla, Bastien, or Hermann.

“Daddy!” Sally shrieked, from somewhere far above.

But Hermann didn’t need him, not today.

“You can’t be here,” Hermann said, not putting down his cane. “I hurt Alison, and nothing I can do will change that. All I can do is extend my sincere apologies and move on. The same is true for you.”

Tendo breathed hard against the bottom of the stick. He reached up to grab it with his hand and Hermann pressed the nub against his skin harder.

“Do not. Just go home. Try to be better.” He looked up, at the second floor window he knew Sally was staring out at him, at her father literally standing his ground. “That’s what I’m doing.”

Tendo swallowed; Hermann could feel the motion against his cane. “Shame on you, Hermann,” he said. “This is not over.”

Hermann sighed and dropped his cane. “Yes it is.”

Tendo dusted himself off, cast a disparaging look at Newt, then at Dietrich, and walked away, his skin still red and angry.

As soon as he was out of sight, Hermann’s leg buckled and he sat down hard, his legs splaying out on the sidewalk.

* * *

 “I went to MIT pretty young. Too young. I didn’t handle it well.”

They were sitting in Newt, Mako, and Raleigh’s living room, watching as the afternoon sun slipping behind the buildings. A horrified neighbor had called the police after seeing the rather pathetic “geek fight” (as Dietrich called it) in front of the apartment. Hermann decided he did not need a second run in with the polizei in as many days, and after being helpfully hauled up by Newt, hightailed it to the second floor, where they hid with Sally while Dietrich sweet talked the whole matter out.

“Go, I got this,” Dietrich said, with a light touch of Hermann’s shoulder. “I got you.”

“... _Danke_.” Hermann said, looking at the floor, feeling only a little abashed.

Sally ran to him as soon as he came in the door. “Daddy, why did that man punch Newt? What comes after the number twenty?” Her eyes crinkled the same way his did, when she smiled.

Dietrich’s voice floated up through the open windows – “no, I’m sorry, I didn’t see anything” – and Sally drifted off, having missed her usual naptime. Hermann let her head rest in his lap, and gently rubbed her scalp as she slept. She’d be awake all night now, but he could handle reading _Paddington_ a few more times. He could handle anything.

And Newt had started to talk, sitting with his back up against the largest of Raleigh’s drums.

“Fourteen? Around the time of the _X-Files_ based amore?” Hermann guessed. Newt made finger guns as a form of confirmation. 

“Knew you were smart. It was just… I didn’t want to be there, I wasn’t ready to be this prodigy they were all grooming me to be, you know?” He rubbed his wrists. “It was too much. I got bad.”

The tattoos, the bracelets. Cover up the scars with enough paint and glitter and maybe no one would realize they were there.

“And I kept thinking about my mom. She came to Berlin in the late 80s, thought she was gonna bring down the wall with music,” Newt laughed a little there, though his shoulders were still tense. “She actually just made me and immediately regretted it, but she was happy playing guitar, you know? She… I think she’s where my music comes from. Does that make sense?”

Hermann nodded.

“So I ran. I have dual citizenship because I was born here, and I was sixteen so it wasn’t too hard to find a job, find a little room to keep my guitar. I was happy. I could breathe for the first time in forever.”

“And now it’s thirteen years later.”

Newt’s eyes widened. “Holy fuck, I think you’re right.” He picked at one of his leather cuffs, stretching it away from his skin. Sure enough, Hermann saw a few raised pink lines in Newt’s skin before he snapped it back down. “I’m not delusional, by the way. Despite what Mako and Raleigh _heavily imply_ to others. Being a rock star isn’t just about the screaming crowds and free drugs and dangerously free sex with groupies, you know? It’s a…”

“A state of mind?”

“Yeah, exactly!” Newt looked out the window, the golden light striping his face. “...If you wanted to come to another show, you know, go for round two, I’d be cool with that.”

“You are terrible at asking people on dates.”

Newt flushed. “Maybe it’s not a date. Maybe it’s a thank you for fighting your loser ex.”

“He’s not my ex. And nobody was a winner in that situation.”

“You’re funny. You think you’re really funny, don’t you? Whatever. I’m not asking you to get married or anything.”

Hermann smiled. “Of course. I don’t even know your last name.”

“I’m just saying we could hang out, and if we end up having sex again, maybe in a bed this time, no harm no foul.”

“Perhaps we go wild and get breakfast the next morning,” Hermann said, and Newt laughed and punched his shoulder.

“Yeah, see, now you’re getting it. And it’s Geiszler. Newton Geiszler.”

Hermann kissed him, bracing his hands on Newt’s thigh. Newt hummed, and wrapped his war-battered arm tight around Hermann’s waist. After a moment, he pulled back.

“Wait, wait, be cool man. There’s kids present.”

Hermann smiled at his daughter. “She’s asleep. A few stolen kisses can’t hurt.”

A little bit of being a father, a little bit of being a brother. A little bit of being the lover to a cool, brave guitarist with an absurd sense of fashion. All in one day. No wonder he was so tired, it took practice, this having a full life.

But no one could accuse Hermann of being anything but a quick study.


End file.
